Emergent Storylines Based on Autonomous Characters with Mindreading Capabilities

Virtual storytelling often uses a fixed, pre-scripted storyline, constraining the characters´ autonomy and behaviour. An agent-based approach provides possibilities of a narrative emerging from interaction between a number of autonomous characters. In this paper such an approach is proposed, based on autonomous virtual agents that have mindreading capabilities. The approach is applied to generate out of a number of interacting characters a soap storyline, in which some of the characters use mindreading in order to mislead and manipulate the other characters.